Award-Winning Author Sarah Selecky

Sarah Selecky is the author of the story collection This Cake is for the Party, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and long listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Her novel Radiant Shimmering Light has been published in multiple countries around the world and optioned for a television series.

Sarah earned her MFA from the University of British Columbia, and in 2011, she founded the Sarah Selecky Writing School, which has become a creative community for thousands of writers around the world.

An exceptional writer and teacher, Sarah is also a warm, generous, and big-hearted human. She follows her curiosity and sense of play in everything she does, and encourages the same in everyone she comes into orbit with.

I hope you enjoy this playful and enlightening conversation. Whether or not you consider yourself a writer, you’re sure to come away with some thought-provoking and helpful insights for art, well-being, and life. 

Websites

Sarah Selecky - https://www.sarahselecky.com/

Sarah Selecky Writing School - https://www.sarahseleckywritingschool.com/

Online Writing Community: While Sarah can be found on social, she spends much more time interacting socially with her subscribers in Centered: her private online space which is ad-free, full of wonderful resources, and home to a thoughtful writing community.

Books

This Cake is for the Party: https://www.sarahselecky.com/this-cake-is-for-the-party

Radiant Shimmering Light: https://www.sarahselecky.com/radiant-shimmering-light

Social

Instagram: #sarahseleckywritingschool

Twitter: @SarahSeleckyWS 

Facebook: Sarah Selecky Writing School

Also mentioned: my candle https://www.thegrowingcandle.com/ 

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Transcript

Award-Winning Author, Sarah Selecky

Kathy: Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you've chosen to come and hang out with me again today, and I am so excited for you to meet my guest this week: award-winning author Sarah Selecky. 

Sarah Selecky is the author of the story collection This Cake is for the Party, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and long listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Her novel, Radiant Shimmering Light has been published in multiple countries around the world and optioned for a television series. 

Sarah earned her MFA from the University of British Columbia, and in 2011 she founded the Sarah Selecky Writing School, which has become a creative community for thousands of writers around the world.

I discovered the brilliance of Sarah Selecky about a decade ago when I read her story collection This Cake is for the Party. And then read it again and again, which subsequently became a pattern for me and all things Sarah Selecky. 

Her writing is smart and funny and filled with astoundingly precise detail that creates magical scenes, filled with flawed and fascinating characters sparking with life. 

In addition to being an exceptional writer and teacher, Sarah is a warm, generous, bighearted human. She follows her curiosity and sense of play in everything she does and encourages the same in everyone she comes into orbit with.

I hope you enjoy this playful and enlightening conversation. Whether or not you consider yourself a writer, you are sure to come away with some thought-provoking and helpful insights for art, wellbeing, and life.

Thanks again for joining us. Enjoy Sarah Selecky. 

So I have my candle lit, I put all my totems around this morning. Thank you very much for giving me permission for sacred spaces, you know what I mean? never gave much thought to that, especially after leaving the church and leaving ceremony and that kind of thing. It took time me to be able to circle back around. 

Sarah: I get that. And, I don't think you're the only one. I love that you are bringing some physical, reminders, like the physicality of a candle. I was just talking to Annie Bray, who is our somatic counselor. 

Kathy: Yes. I know Annie. I mean, I haven't talked to her, but I know her practices.

Sarah: She's amazing. And we're working more with her. She's gonna be doing monthly calls in Centered, for our mental health consult. 

Kathy: It's all It's all in the nervous system.

Sarah: It's all in the nervous system. And she was saying that lighting a candle because it has the light and the heat and the physicality of it is actually doing neurologically. She has like some geeky stuff that she wants to share in our Centered call about why it actually works.

 It's like there's the things that we do in our religious backgrounds as they are, it's like bookmark those, have brought those in for reasons. And then we leave them, but the anchors have a reason that's beyond what the religion says about it. That actually still has an effect that is really important and helpful. It's just useful for our system. 

Kathy: Actually. measurable and definable. Yeah.

 I am gonna plug my candle here. So this is my Hygge Light Grow Candle. I'm right at the bottom. I mean, I'm literally at the end of my wick. 

Sarah: And then you can use that as a little pot for a succulent 

Kathy: Yes, it comes with a little band, a little natural paper band around it that is impregnated with wildflower seeds. So when you finish the candle, you clean it out, you put some soil, you plant the paper, and flowers grow.

Sarah: So cute.

Kathy: I love this company. They're amazing. I'm gonna try to get the CEO on the podcast because they're so, they're totally earth conscious with all their packaging and everything, but they're very much about Hygge, which I don't know much about. It's just a, I think it's a Nordic, I don't know, Swedish, I'm not sure.

Sarah: think It's

Kathy: Danish concept of home and spaces. So I need to do some study, but their scents are amazing. This is lavender and it does something to my whole being. And so I discovered this, uh, it was a gift from my daughter-in-law, and now I'm on subscription program because I burn it so much. 

Sarah: Do they send a candle every month?

Kathy: Well, you, you pick your frequency, but I do one every three months. And, they burn clean and they're just beautiful.

So I'm gonna trust that we'll circle back around to this physical space thing. When we get into a little more into play, except for, I just wanna show you one more little friend here who's sitting on my camera. This is Vash.

Sarah: Vash! 

Kathy: So Vash is my little friend and she, she plays with us. We have two other monkeys who play with, with Mike and I and our granddaughter. She's seven, and whenever she calls us and we have video time, she always, she'll call the monkeys.

We'll be on for about two seconds and then she'll be like, her call for the monkeys is... and so then the monkeys come.

 God, my kingdom for a sound engineer. 

The call for the monkeys is OO-EE-AH-AH! So that's what our granddaughter does to call them and, and then they show up. 

Funny story: we've been talking with the monkeys since she was probably, I don't know, five and she's seven now. 

So, a little ways in having the monkeys show up as part of our playtime, she got this very serious look on her face and said, " Are the monkeys real?" 

And we said, well, they're real in, in our imagination. I don't know if she was buying that or not, but she, she just sat with that for a little while. We would hold them up in front of our faces, you know, like we would position them in the camera so she couldn't see our mouths moving.

So she says, "Nana, move Vash to the side." 

And I'd be like, why? " Well, because I wanna see your mouth. I wanna see if it's moving when Vash is talking." 

And so I moved her to the side and, and I talked her, and she saw my mouth moving and she said, "I thought so. I, I thought it was you."

It was just like a shattering moment for me of, of like the illusion having to be shattered because of her curiosity.

But the fun part is, is that as soon as she knew that, like she knew, okay, it's Nana and PopPop, you know, she like fully accepted it and then fully accepted the monkeys again, as being real and being her buddies, and she, she talks to them and they talk back to her and when she gets bored with Nana and PopPop calls the monkeys.

They show up and she's like, oh good, my friends are here. Like, like they really are real. I mean, they are real. They are. I mean, they are, aren't they?

 So Vash shows up with her brother, Monkey monk, who's he's, he can be a little, he's a sweetie, but he's a little socially awkward.

Um, and so we play with the monkeys. And so Vash might, I might be doing a featured series with Vash. Like, she's been telling me that she's thinking she might have some real wisdom to share, so she might do a little advice column. 

And I'm telling you, she's real. So send me your questions. I mean, send her your questions. She's full of wisdom.

Sarah: Does she, I guess she may be an expert or have some advice or opinions around monkey mind?

Kathy: She's a monkey. Yeah, for sure. So anyway, she's here supporting me today.

Sarah selecky. Oh my God. You know, I've told you, how long have I been following you around for? Well since I think like 2013. 

And I you have to know you... I'm like a little duck and I've imprinted and I just can't, like, I can't leave you. 

I just would like you to share just a little bit about the Sarah Selecky Writing School, because I think it's one of the most beautiful things happening in the world. And, can you share a little bit about that? I should say I, I'm a graduate of Sarah's program and, and now I'm also a teacher on staff.

Sarah: Yes. It started in, well, it started a long time ago. I've been teaching creative writing since before my first book came out. My first collection came out in 2010. So I guess I've been teaching writing since almost 10 years before that. 

And in the past, decade it's been called the Sarah Selecky Writing School; I decided to just name it after myself, because it's what I'm doing. 

The school is a place for writers who really wanna understand craft and technique and wanna really learn what language can do and what words can do and they wanna become better writers.

And it's also a place for writers who understand that there's a mystery, there's some magic, there's a sensitivity, there's some empathy. There's something about wonder that also can be accessed in the process of writing really fantastically written, well-crafted work. 

 So it's a hybrid that's a non-academic option for people who maybe aren't applicable to get an MFA for some reason, or don't necessarily fit into academia or want something that is like a support as well as academia for their writing craft and instruction that's gonna meet them with their intelligence and also encourage, support and work with their intuition and all of that magic that also comes with any art practice.

And that is what our school is. And even as I've evolved in the school has evolved, I think the thing that stays the same time and space and through the years that we've been working is this combination of really intelligent discussions that also make a lot of space for intuition, spirit, and mystery.

Kathy: That's the heart. That's why it stays. It's the heartbeat.

Sarah: Yeah, Yeah, that's the thing. That's it's the both and, and it's paradoxical and it's nature somewhat. It's the right brain and the left brain. 

It's what writers do. We're thinkers. It's the mental and it's also the emotional, the physical and the spiritual, all together. It's, so confusing and juicy and it's why we do it. 

Kathy: It's integrated. 

Sarah: It's integrated. Yeah. And I keep learning. I mean, science keeps learning. 

Like we keep learning about what our neurology is and isn't. And then we always keep going back to the classics, because without even explaining what makes a good story we know when it's embodied, what a good story is; know what good writing is, so It's both. 

Kathy: I love that. 

And I love that there's so much safe space there for people to explore those things.

Sarah: Thank you. Yeah. I want it to be, I want it to be a safe place or a place that people can find courage and go beyond what they know that they can do, like outside of what they're already confident in and try new things.

Kathy: I also love that there is no absence of rigor. So, while we're exploring the magical and the ineffable and the heart, the degree of skill that you acquire through that is kind of amazing to me.

And after talking with other writers who have had experiences where they've been shredded in an MFA program somewhere or in a writing class somewhere and said, oh, I'm not a writer and walk away. I just feel like, boy, if ever there was a thing that creators need, it's empathy and it's a safe place to explore their craft to hone their craft. So I appreciate that that's the kind of spirit that you're bringing to something of such depth.

Sarah: Thank you. 

Yes. And you know, because now you're teaching it and because you've done it, there is rigor, there is study, there is practice.

It's like Aikido, you know? It's like art that is like over and over, it's like a puzzle that you get to puzzle out. 

When it's in a place where someone cares about you and your story and you're writing, and not just what's wrong with it, but actually focusing on where your strengths are and here's something that you can learn to make that even better. 

Then we become sponges again. Learning is just so much better when we're in a place where we feel like it's safe to learn. 

Kathy: Yeah. And speaking of Annie Bray, I love that you bring the somatic practices into The Story Intensive. 

Sarah: Yeah, you can listen to the practices before every lesson and I know Annie Bray, I know her work and she's been working in body practices while I was working in writing practice for, for many, many years and all of those modalities started really integrating as well as now and what we know about somatics and the nervous system now is finally coming up.

So yes, we've definitely built that in and integrated it writers are using their bodies. Writers use their bodies when they write scenes, just like actors, just like dancers.

Kathy: It's important for every aspect of life in mental health and full body wellness. I think all of the work, the scientific work that's going into studying the nervous system, autonomic nervous system and stuff now is like, oh my God, it's such a key for humanity to get in tune with it. 

Sarah: How could we skip it?

Kathy: Right? You see the fallout. We're experiencing it right now because so much unregulation happening in the world, and, and it starts here. It starts right here with me learning regulate me, you know?

Sarah: Because we pick up on each other. So in every classroom, if you think about your high school teachers and what they know or don't know, just intuitively about what energy they bring into the room and then all the other students coming from their families coming into a room together and all of that. Like, it kind of boggles your mind when you think about the circumstances we ask ourselves to learn under, as children and as adults. And what we just assume is okay. 

Kathy: Most of us, most of the time that we're shut off, like all executive function is gone. Yeah. And disassociated. Yep. Absolutely. 

So it's, these are the things that give me hope. Honestly, when I turn off the noise and I hear these kinds of conversations and hear about these things, it makes me realize, oh my God, humanity is such an amazing...

Sarah: mm-hmm.

Kathy: thing. We're such an amazing, 

Sarah: We're doing it. Yeah It brings me hope too.

Kathy: it's messy, but there we have so many tools to, navigate the mess, and to have more space for it.

Sarah: Yes. And something that I always talk about in the writing instruction, but again, writing is, I mean the macro and the micro, right. We're gonna talk about writing. 

We, can, every time we talk about writing, we're also talking about life and how to how to be a writer is how to be a human. In my vision, in my philosophy anyway. In my method.

And something that I often taught and learned from myself and knew and saw in my students, when we get together, it doesn't matter how you feel at the time, if you set a timer and put pen to page for five minutes write down a list of words that start with the letter G .

Something happens in those five minutes. I mean, the outcome might not be-- it's micro. It's like a microdose of regulation and artistry and creativity.

Um, but a lot happens in that micro, in those five minutes, something changes that is measurable as you said. Like it's, it's real. It's not nothing. And those micro moments for an artist, for a writer, or for all of us, but we'll talk about writers, it makes the next page possible. It makes sleeping that night different. So the ideas that come to you the next day, are possible.

It ripples out for a long time. 

Just that five, if that's all you can do, if you're feeling so like antsy and you can't do it, and you don't wanna look at your book because it's like, ah, I can't do it right now. Or or I don't know what I, I know I wanna write, but I don't have an idea and my idea if all the like crowded thoughts, if the monkey mind if vash is like, maybe Vash could speak to this. If the monkey mind is like crowding you, that micro, those five minutes makes everything else possible. 

Kathy: As a writer who frequently struggles with, depression and, anxiety and depression and anxiety depress, it's like this thing, it very much affects my writing and, and I will end up abandoning it for stretches. 

And when I get a hold of that simple tool that you just shared and realize that by just willing myself to sit down and take that five minutes, it is to me, a signal to my writing that I see you and all of my creativity. I see you. I acknowledge you. I'm having a hard time being the conduit right now, but I'm trying to connect with you for this five minutes.

And so for me, maybe that's a more esoteric way of looking at it, but...

Sarah: I dunno if it is. I mean it, I relate to that and I feel like, one thing to add to that is that you don't have to feel like doing it to do it. That's that willing piece. 

I don't like imagining dragging yourself, kicking and fighting to the chair and sitting yourself in the chair.

There's a lot of myths around like big, long, time-honored myths about get your seat in the chair and just stay in it and like grit. 

All of that grit, which is one way to look at it, but another way that I hear you talking about it is there's a voice inside you or there's a self inside yourself that's sort of beyond the anxiety and depression, beyond the voices, beyond the mind that's like a good... parent .

Kathy: That's what I was gonna say, I call that my grownup self.

Sarah: Yeah, and that self knows that it's gonna feel really good to write for five minutes and knows that you don't have a ton of capacity right now to like get started. You're not lit up. It's not uptime. it's a bit of downtime.

And the best thing for you is like, here, this is gonna be nourishing soup for your soul. Like, whoa, that sounds like the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. I see where they came up with the title now. But it is, it's like here's a fuzzy blanket, here's some soup, here's something, here's a coloring book for you. 

This is what you need. And it's yeah, your grownup self is taking care of you. 

And I feel like your writing what are some metaphors? What are some ways we can think about what writing is and what that voice or that self is. Are they the same? Are they different? Is that writing? Is that a different, like we're not gonna get to the bottom of it, but, what works metaphorically for you? 

For me, I feel like writing is like I can connect to a source or something bigger. My writing is a representative of something way bigger and more smart and more important, like beyond time and space, connected to everybody else who's writing, connected to all the things I've written. It's like a... big thing. 

Kathy: ancestors and the... 

Sarah: ancestors the future... 

Kathy: all wisdom there is. Yeah. 

For me, the metaphor is conduit. 

It's like opening the reducing valve by taking whatever the medium is, and for me, it's like writing, yes, but there are other things in included in that, like cooking, just being alive, for me.

I can try to find that space where I can open up to playfulness so that, that's just kind of a mode that I operate in more and more. It's, it's not my go-to. It really isn't. I have to purposefully find tools to help me dial that open a little bit more, to allow more in.

But, I think you channel that through your art, whether it's writing or acting or painting or any other kind of medium. Or whether it's food or working in your garden, playing with your children, or playing with your significant other, you know.

To me the metaphor is a conduit. It's like you just utilize whatever tools you can to dial that wider, and make more space for that thing to come in.

Sarah: Which can, as you say, come in in all these different forms and does. I think that are a lot of neurotic writers because writing doesn't naturally have within it, especially with once typewriters and then word processors, once we got out of the feather and the ink and the nib and the scent and everything, now everything is on our computer.

So email's on our computer. Everything's on our computer, booking tickets to see a movies on it, watching movies is on our com-- everything we do is on our computer. So it really flattens the sensory aspect of it. 

And beyond that, writers are working with language, which is already, like what we love about E.E. Cummings is the play of like, something doesn't make sense. So he's making art.

Metaphor is a way for us to make something out of something that doesn't connect. Like the light in the window is, is like butter. That's artful language, but it's wrong. There's a wrongness. It's not, it's not logical. 

So we're breaking the rules of language when we make a metaphor. We're not being good students. We're not making writing a good report, and we're not gonna get, you know, a good grade and we're not gonna get our law degree from writing metaphor.

So writers have an extra step of having to unfasten from logic, whereas you're, if you're slicing vegetables, you're there with your carrot. If you're knitting a sweater, you're there with the wool and the color and the texture. If you're dancing, you're in your body, you feel your muscles, there's no language present that's telling you that you're doing it wrong when you break it, you know, you just get to kind of feel the pleasure of your body.

And in language you can write a book and get it published and get some critical acclaim without embodying anything. You can do it all from your head and get like, you know, praised for that. 

So my school, my method is like, not that, that is not where happiness lives for me. It's not where the joy, it's not the conduit for me. The conduit for me is in bringing my body into it. 

But it isn't the natural state of writing as I know it as an adult. Like since I took my first English class, I started to unlearn how to do that with language. 

Kathy: Was there a moment that you can recall where you realized that there was a better way?

Sarah: Yeah. I think that it was in reading first. 

So reading other writers. I mean, I always was a writer and a communicator.

As a little kid, in grade two, I spoke only in rhyme; I just got it in my head that I was gonna try to challenge myself this way. 

I guess. I don't remember, I do remember speaking this way. I think because I, I'd been reading a lot of, like Dr. Seuss and my teacher called my parents and said, there's something wrong.

Like every assignment, it doesn't matter if it's supposed to be a poem or not, everything she hands in is in rhyme and she only answers things in rhyme. And it was just like something I just like got obsessed with. 

But the thing about that was that it was fun and I think it came because I was reading a lot of rhyming couplets books that I was reading.

So I was, early on I was copying writers and seeing like, I want --you can do that? I wanna do that. 

When I was young, it may have been grade nine. I skipped a class and went down to the library. I don't remember which class I was skipping, probably Math um, and found a book in the library that I'd never seen before.

It was new. It just came out. It was called Weetzie Bat by Francesca Leah Block. She's a YA writer. She writes actually for adults as well. She's still writing. She's like, prize-winning. I'm not the only person who found that book and realized that there was another way to be.

But there was something in her book that opened me up and I realized, oh, you could write like that? It was very magical. It was like a real life magic story. 

So it was a fairytale, but it was with people who I recognized and knew. And it was very magical. And it was fun. She had fun. There was play in her line. 

And that was one turning point where I just realized, okay, and I had all that hutzpah that a teenager had, right? Like, I'm gonna do things my way. That that, I still try to channel, my inner 12 year old. I try to channel my inner 17 year old. I try, like they all have something to offer in the creative process.

And then in my early twenties, in the early days of university, a writer named Lauren Carter introduced me to Natalie goldberg's work. And that was the first time I did a timed writing exercise with a writing prompt.

Those things together started to braid the first molecules of how I would want to do it my way if I was going to actually be a writer. And unfasten all those... and then I took my first university writing class and then I dropped out of English. I knew that it wasn't going to teach me how to be a writer. 

Kathy: That gives so much permission for people to access the art form...

Sarah: Yeah. 

Kathy: outside of the box.

Sarah: You don't need to study English to be a writer. 

The thing about English classes, it exposes you to a lot of books and a lot of writing. But what you have to do with them in order to prove your worth can be harmful to the creative process, I think. 

Kathy: Yeah, yeah, 

Sarah: It's not playful, is it.

Kathy: No, I don't find it that way. I tend to love rule breakers. You know, I love, I mean, I think there's a place for rules, but if a rule's not working out, and doesn't make sense then, or why not just challenge it and see what, emerges?

I cut my teeth on Sarah Selecky's short story collection, which is this Cake is for the Party. I've read it probably cover to cover five times.

It's what made me fall in love with the playfulness of your writing.

The deep presence in sensory detail for me was like, wow, it just sucked me right in. 

And then there's this, Radiant Simmering Light. 

Here's another one that I recommend everybody go and get right now. I literally is the only 

book that I've ever read where I finished the last page. I closed the book, I turned it over, and I opened to the first page, and started it over again. And yes, and I've actually read it three times.

Because it's one of those stories where I, it's like, how did she do that? You know what I mean? So I go back in and I go in intending to figure out how you did it, and then I get sucked into the story and I forget to pay attention to the craft. Know what I'm saying? 

That's what I love about it. The characters are so beautifully formed and so fractured and, they're there in their messiness and in their beauty. And so you fall in love with them and then you're, you're along for the ride.

So, and it's unusual, you break rules in this book. And that's another thing I love about it, you know, you just experiment and explore. So, um, I, I, 

I forgot I was gonna ask you before we, we started, I was like, Ooh, do you wanna read some of it? I would love for you to read some of it, but,

Sarah: I would love to. So I picked a section. Yes, I'd love to, I'd love to read it.

 One of the things about this book and the way I wrote it, it doesn't have chapters and it just, it goes and goes and goes and goes and goes. And I was trying to write something that had the scroll energy that never had any natural pauses, but that makes it difficult for readings.

So I'm gonna read the scene that is from the early part of the book. So when we're still getting to know all the characters and I'm establishing what the scenario is, it's straight from Act One and we're in Toronto where Lillian is living, uh, trying to make ends meet, really trying, she's, she's trying to like, Market her wares as an artist and work in this attention economy.

And her, a cousin from an estranged family who she hasn't seen in years and years and years and years, has reinvented herself as an empowerment coach. A life coach, really. Um, and she's quite famous at the time, so she's on stage and this is one of her events. And Lillian is in attendance.

Eleven stands in the center of the stage. Very still, she holds her arms out at her sides, both hands cupped up slightly. The sequins on her sleeves sparkle and give off light. Suppose I recognize from a picture of Jesus that used to be on the wall in our grandma's bedroom.

Without any preamble or introduction, Eleven begins to call out her Sacred Ascendancy Prayer. It's familiar to everyone because we've all downloaded the desktop wallpaper. 

Eleven's Ascendancy prayer is the long form of her tagline: "Want What You Want." 

She's had the prayer printed on mugs, embossed onto notebook covers and embroidered on pillows. You can buy phone cases and prints in her online shop.

Many of the women in the audience recite it with her. I have it memorized too. I try to make a point of doing one of each of the prayers every day, but I'm so floored by Eleven's presence on the stage. I can't find my voice. My body tingles as she says the words. I can feel my own heart beating. That's Florence, my cousin Florence.

Create before you consume. 

Listen to the messages from your body. 

Remind yourself, "I'm here."

Do no more than three things a day. 

Love is a verb, not a noun. 

Dance about it. 

Joy does not exist without gratitude. 

Courage is action in the presence of fear. 

Rest until you want to play. 

Play until you want to rest. 

Let yourself want what you want.

Live the way you love to feel. 

I sit in my seat with my hands on my lap, and I watch Eleven's mouth. As she speaks, she sways from stage left to stage right, her blonde hair glinting under the gel lights, her shoulders shining. Why do I keep sabotaging myself? Do I have some issue with my own worth? Some fear of entitlement? Or is it fear of success?

Maybe I don't charge enough for my work. But my clients couldn't afford my work if I charged what I should. What's wrong with me? This isn't how you're supposed to run a business. This isn't a successful life. I'm too old for this. 

"Do you love who you are?" Eleven asks us. "Do you love where you're going?"

The audience murmurs, a sound like wings, ruffling, maybe things are shifting.

"I love you all so much," Eleven calls out over our heads. Her voice is deep and she speaks slowly. I can hear her breath. You are perfect and you are beautiful. Do you know your own beauty? Do you know your own worth?"

We nod yes. 

"Show me! I want you to show me that you know your own perfection. Will you show me?"

"Yes," we say.

"Say it!" Her hair quivers under the stage lights. "Say it with me! I am perfect as I am!" I see Florence up there in flashes like a ghost of young Florence is living right underneath eleven's. 20 years is a long time, but Eleven looks so different and it's not just age. There's a sheen to Eleven that I didn't see on Florence. It's not that Florence didn't have brightness. She did seeing Eleven on stage. So shiny reminds me how beautiful Florence was as a girl, even without the shine. 

"I am perfect as I am!" we yell.

"Louder!"

"I am perfect as I am!" I yell it as loud as I can.

Kathy: Can you just read the rest of the book? Oh my God. 

Sarah: Something about reading from short stories that was so much easier was I could just read and get a good chunk of the story. I could like even read a whole story sometimes in a sitting. 

And, and writing novels is so different when writing a long piece. Cuz then the whole point when I wrote it was that people wouldn't, I wouldn't want people to stop and put it down.

Kathy: And it's hard to. 

Sarah: So I'm glad about that. I wanted it to be propulsive, and I wanted it to be integrated so the scenes aren't so like everything picks up on something else, which means that I found when I, that's why I have a reading copy, because I had to be really careful and I've written things in to like let people know what this means and what this means and what this means... to context. Yeah. 

Kathy: Yeah, 

Sarah: It's a novelist's problem, I guess. Thank you for asking me to read.

Kathy: Yeah. Oh, I'm glad you did.

Sarah: Well, Lisa Flanagan does a great job of reading the audio book. 

Kathy: Oh, I haven't, I haven't gotten the audio book. That's next. 

Sarah: Wonderful job. She's like an award-winning audiobook narrator. And, uh, she does a great job. 

Kathy: Okay. Well that will be my fourth time through.

Sarah: Totally different experience. I'm sure. 

Kathy: I know, I'm sure. How was that, like, how was the trust factor letting go of your baby to another voice? 

Sarah: I was so grateful, honestly, that it wasn't in my hands. I, I was just like please hold this. Please, please make this great . Oh. Um, it was also strange.

Um, I, I was. Excited that she took the project on. But it was also strange because the book is, um, so it's not that it's internal, there's lots of scene, but it's, it has to do with the digital life. Which is not an audio, not always audio. Like it's a lot of texts and a lot of Twitter handles and Instagram handles and stuff that makes it kind of clunky. Um, but she did a great job. 

Kathy: I'm actually super curious now how she handled those pieces, like the pieces that were text that 

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kathy: you know, because you reading something and saying something or like worlds apart.

Sarah: It's different. It's like you take a snapshot of it with your, with your eyes when you're looking at someone's hashtag, it's like an image almost. Putting it into words. Yeah. It's really different. Yeah. 

Kathy: Which was a very interesting choice that you made in writing the book, like choosing to include those communications and those ways of people interacting, which, I mean, it's such a theme of the book.

Sarah: Yeah. 

Kathy: But you so successfully wove those pieces into the story. Um, and because the scenes were so full of detail and presence and richness, um, those little connecting pieces, they, they really. They were a beautiful thread that didn't disrupt the flow of the story.

Sarah: Oh, that's good to hear. 

Kathy: Yeah. For me it was like, oh, just added to the the paradox of the piece. Like when you were reading that, I'm like, I believe everything Eleven is saying right now. 

Sarah: Yeah.

Kathy: Like, I wanna stand up and yell those things. 

Sarah: Yeah. It's all, they're good truths. 

Kathy: They are,

Sarah: Yeah. 

Kathy: And yet you explore like the underbelly of that world, and I don't know if you call it an underbelly, but like there's another aspect.

Sarah: Well, it's anything. Yeah. I mean, anything that promises to be a hundred percent anything isn't taking paradox into, isn't taking the whole picture right into place. And so that shininess, it just tings a little when that's all that's allowed to be.

And at the same time, I hope in this book to not a mockery of the life coach world and the kind of like embassy towards wellness that we've seen happening. It's not. It's not, not true. 

Kathy: Right. Well, and you explore the commerce of that too, which... 

Sarah: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 

Kathy: Another interesting dynamic. Mm-hmm. , which I had a conversation with my friend who's a plant medicine shaman.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. 

Kathy: Who makes her living that way. And we had this conversation about money and the spirit of exchange and you know, and the very subtle dynamics of that. And it's something that you cover in the book in such a thoughtful way. Um, And it, it really gives pause. I don't know. It brings up a lot of interesting quandaries.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, there's so much in there. It's, it's, um, with plant medicine, just thinking about that, there's, there's so many places where it's like... having an economy is not a bad thing, you know, and in the world we live in, money makes the world go round. And people, you know, undervaluing, the very rich work that they give and space that they hold and knowledge they have, is not the answer.

Like, people living undervalued is not the answer. And there's also, you know, what, what's enough, what's it for, what's motivating it? All these questions that I think, it's funny when I wrote this book, the wellness industry seemed to be everything and everywhere it's good. Like I couldn't imagine it getting more, it got it got bigger.

Yeah. 

Kathy: Yeah. But you know, all of it. Yeah, I'm sure it is. 

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kathy: But I think what I'm starting to realize, at least in my, the way I view things is that everything, you know, everything leads to the same place. So even if it looks really shitty or it looks really like, uh, confounding. . I think that all of it has the potential to lead people toward awakening.

Sarah: Yeah. 

Kathy: No matter what it is. And it's such an individual thing and an individual path, but collectively, I think like anything that has a pain point can drive us toward a more thriving way of being so...

Sarah: Yeah, I think so too. Mm-hmm. I think so too. I think it's, there's opportunity even in the... I don't even wanna say brokenness. They're like looking at something as broken and needing fixing is just kind of missing the point. If we look at it another way. Like there's a puzzle. There's a puzzle that we're trying to like figure out together.

Kathy: Yeah. Yeah. And there, and there's no reference photo. I And you have to pull back, like, so you can start to see the patterns emerging. So that's where, for me, stillness and meditation and getting quiet and like unplugging is a place where you can pull the camera back and like, oh, okay right. 

Sarah: Keeping a shelf with nothing on it. 

Kathy: Can I, can I copy that? 

Sarah: Yeah. Yes. 

Kathy: I may have to do that. 

Sarah: Please. Let's make a movement. 

Kathy: Let's hashtag it. We'll hashtag it. 

Sarah: The empty shelf. Yeah. 

Kathy: #emptyshelf. Oh my God, Sarah. 

I'm finishing up a novel right now that I wasn't really enjoying it so much, and like four or five times I thought, why am I continuing to read this when it's not lighting me up? 

But it was the only thing I had, I don't have anything on hand right now, and I didn't wanna go back to the library, so I just kept reading it and about three quarters of the way through, I started engaging the characters. I'm like, okay, I, I'm starting to forgive some of the things that are bothering me.

Somehow she's hooked me into these people, you know? And so now on like, the last three pages. I'm, you know, I'm finishing it and then I'm, and now I'm going back and asking myself, well, what wasn't working for you and why. 

Sarah: What wasn't working? 

Kathy: Like, how did sh how did these people get under your skin? Enough that now I'm kind of milking the last few pages. 

Sarah: It's so interesting. And that when that happens, we've heard this, sometimes there's a book that it's not the right time for you, and it just doesn't, and then you pick it up later and you're like, oh, I do love it.

Like Elena ferrante's My Brilliant Friend series was that for me. I couldn't get into it. Everyone was talking about, everyone loved it. I get 30 pages in and I was like, no, I don't see it. 

Kathy: City of Girls.

Sarah: City of Girls, really? 

Kathy: Yes but I am not, haven't given up on it. I just, sorry I interrupted 

Sarah: It's, no, I find it really interesting because it's like, I think there's some chemistry to it that has to do with, obviously, what we're working on, what we're focusing on, what we want to learn, what is the thing. 

And at the time I was writing something because as, as writers, the stuff we're reading is always part of what we're writing. 

I don't even know if I can ever read anything without thinking about making it at the same time. I don't think I ever turn that part of me off. 

And when I first read those first 30 pages a couple times, I was working on specificity, I was working on getting a structure that I needed and the gift of My Brilliant Friend is not in a concise structure, it's in the flow, right? 

It's in the like consciousness. 

But later, once I had my structure and I was more into the consciousness of these characters, then I could see, like a year later, when my writing had changed, and I'd kind of gotten the structure down, then I could go in and see like, oh, 

Kathy: That is so interesting how 

Sarah: I understand now. Yeah, 

Kathy: it informed you. 

Sarah: So I'm curious how the book that you're reading, was it just not lighting you up or did you really dislike it? Because that's also interesting.

Kathy: I was being super critical I think in the beginning, and I'm not even gonna mention the author or book, but, um, I felt like the book was preaching at me. felt like the book had a message, and so the message kept slapping me in the face.

Sarah: Never want that.

Kathy: Yeah. And luckily, I think she was in love with her characters enough that she helped me to kind of break through the clunkiness and get into, and there were moments like, it's not that the language wasn't beautiful, and it's not that it was uninteresting, it's just, I don't know.

But I'm gonna chew on that question for myself. Where am I at with my writing And why was there this disconnect with that particular novel? 

But I was gonna say, now that I'm almost done with it, I'm probably gonna read this again. Although, I have a reading list that's like I'll never accomplish it in my whole life. 

Sarah: No, there are too. We won't, we won't read it all. It's It's okay. 

Kathy: Um, you know, I could talk about Radiant Simmering Light for, um, a very, very many amount of minutes, but are you able to share anything about what's happening with the option of it or ...?

Sarah: Well, it's been, it was optioned. It was optioned for a TV show. Um, and, uh, and that's that. 

Kathy: Okay. All right.

Sarah: Now that's that. Yeah. 

Kathy: Okay then. Okay. That's all I was curious about and I know that that's been a long time coming, so that's exciting. It's fun. 

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I look at Hilma af Klint as inspiration for my, my creative work. 

Kathy: I don't know who that is. Oh my God, I'm sure I just outed myself...

Sarah: Oh no. Maybe don't... 

Kathy: as a total Nimrod.

Sarah: Not at all. A lot of people haven't heard of. This is a, this is an artist in Sweden who was, uh, painting in her twenties, or no, in the twenties. Um, probably in her twenties as well. And she was, she was actually, she. She was the in inventor of abstract expressionism. So modern female painter. I'm like, not saying this properly, I'm not using any of the artistic terms that, uh, an art historian would use. Anyway, she was completely overlooked. She packed all of her stuff away and she wrote a note to her family after her death.

It wouldn't be, until years and years and years later that you would ever even open this vault of paintings. Cuz the world's not ready yet. 

Kathy: What? 

Sarah: And in 2020, I believe, or 2019 or before, somewhere around, maybe just pre, just pre pandemic. They did. It was, uh, she had said release them now. And she did. 

Kathy: Posthumously?

Sarah: Yep. Posthumously. And they are now rewriting our history textbooks to include her in the cannon because she was before the men who... 

Kathy: Talk about a person who like, I'm gonna cry. She had a vision that she completely allowed, like, she didn't grasp it and claw at it and hold it like it was hers.

Sarah: She was connected to flow and source and that was a very, she was a spiritual painter. It was a very, yeah, it's very spiritual work. Um, and it's very moving work like to see it is just so beautiful. 

There's a great documentary that you should see. Um, you'll love it, you'll love it. 

Kathy: uh, the documentary is called Watch Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, and you can check it out on Prime Video.

Sarah: One of the fundamental pieces that's has me agog, is in her journals and in her sketchbooks and in her journals, she had imagined and envisioned, um, a gallery space to show this work. And it was a spiral. 

And she had all these sketches of it and the Guggenheim had not been built yet. It hadn't been designed. But she had sketched out, she visioned that these would be shown in the Guggenheim, which indeed it was. And it was, I think it's like the, it was some record breaking show.

Like I think the, the amount of traffic that came in to see Hilma's work at the Guggenheim in 2019, I believe it was in 2019, was like off the charts. The paintings are just vibrating. Oh my. But she called it, She called it and she just, and she said like, there's not a place for this work yet, but open it later and it'll be ready.

Kathy: Okay. I'm gonna be going back and listening to this piece of this conversation, like over and over because it's so gorgeous. It's so delicious. Oh my God. Thank you for sharing that. That is crucial for artists... 

Sarah: it's so crucial. And the other thing I will just also add is that I just heard. This, this, a friend who I was just talking to today reminded me, um, there was a documentary about Leonard Cohen, and as an artist, he's such an inspiring artist.

Kathy: Oh, yeah. 

Sarah: Um, his album, the Hallelujah album tanked. And they wouldn't distribute it in the States. Columbia Records wouldn't even publish it and that they hated it so much, they won't even even publish it. And you listen to that album now, or you listen to Hallelujah now, and of course it's an incredible release that just, it was before its time. 

So artists everywhere, you're not working in linear time. You're working in source time. In another time. 

Kathy: That's, it's, it's so important for us to practice holding everything like this. You know, and that's why for me, it's so important to be in tune and in touch with my heart because my heart is the only space where I'm not, like, my claws aren't out and I'm not gripping and like that's mine.

Or I gotta have, or that, you know, I want, I want, I want. It's like, no, you know? Thank you for sharing all of that. That was beautiful. 

Yeah. Um, you and I have had a couple conversations where you will share with me something that is lighting you up, like something that you're learning that's just got you, like you can't stop reading about it. You can't stop researching it. Is there something? 

Sarah: Well, there's something that I'm not deep in the research of it yet, because I'm making something... it's the product of a deep dive into story structure. 

So I was looking at story structure and I started that deep dive really with Radiant Shimmering Light. And that was with the hero's journey and looking at it and really investigating the hero's journey.

Save the Cat, I looked at as well for, I was looking at a lot of novelists, a lot of writers have written books on structure and they're basically the three act structure with some shifts and twists. 

Kathy: So Save the Cat is a trilogy of books on screenwriting and story structures by Blake Snyder, who was an American screenwriter of consultant, author, educator based in Los Angeles, who became one of the most popular writing mentors in the film industry.

Sarah: And after writing Radiant Shimmering Light, I was like, hmm, there's gotta be something more, because the hero's journey was sort of unsatisfying for the characters in Radiant Shimmering Light. 

In the hero's journey. Like if I were to write this book again, I would want to experiment with the structure. So obviously I'm thinking what would be the next book and what would be the next structure. 

Because the hero's journey doesn't work out for these characters. This is a heroin's journey within the hero's journey structure. 

And within the hero's journey structure, things don't resolve, because they aren't heroes, they're heroines.

So in the structure of a hero's journey, the heroines are left alone. And that's not the heroin's journey. The heroines need to delegate and band together and come together as a collective and be more social. 

So because this is a book about, uh, business and not a feminist business model, it's about, you know, the standard business model, and capitalism, and making art within capitalism, that's a hero's journey. 

So they're heroines trying to make it ... Sound familiar to any of us? Maybe, I don't know... 

Um... So uh, so I did a deep dive looking at other story structures and other patterns and other forms and linking it up with the Wheel of the Year, the Four Seasons, the intermediary seasons, looking at what the energy of the Wheel of the Year is like. 

Um, there's a lot of commercial and popular cultural witchcraft stuff going on. Lots of books. Novels about witches of all different kinds of magic of different kinds.

So there's lots of information. I'm not the only person looking for other alternatives to cycles and phases. Looking at the moon and phases of the moon and how that reads on top of the heroin's journey and story structure and what is the natural story structure, if there's a narrative that we're putting onto nature to make meaning out of it. 

And in and through all of that study that really I've been doing for the past two or three years, I had a lovely insight when I was trying to organize an anthology that I'm working on, non-fiction, and I felt like it was linear, I was putting it into a beginning, middle, and end.

It sounds so funny when I'm talking about it now, because it looks really, when I presented it that way, it seems very obvious. But I have to tell you, the insight came to me like it was like a bolt of lightning. 

Like, wait a second. I've been studying all of these other cycles, which is like, a circular cycle more than a linear one or a linear one that repeats. Not a circle, but like a spiral of growth and evolution. 

Again, this is not new and it's not even new to us. It's not new to me, it's not new. But in this, in the parameter of this project that I've been working on, I struggled with it and struggled with it and tried to solve the problem and arranged them this way in s Scrivener, arranged them that way in s Scrivener, rewrote it, re started a new s Scrivener file, re-uploaded all the content, tried to organize it all again, I have all the content, but I wanna put it in a form before I revise it.

And then I was like, oh, it's already there. 

I see what that spiral is. I've been working on it for so many years in all of these other stories in other ways.

So I think, and then this is the piece that I, that the right brain and left brain thing that I wanted to talk to you about. Cause I know this is something you're really interested in as well, is like, I think from the, from everything I've read and heard and and studied about how the right brain works, it's working in images, it's work, it's not logical, it's not wor, it's working in emotion. It's like the Jill Bolte-Taylor story. 

Kathy: So if you haven't heard about Jill Bolte-Taylor, she is an incredible woman. She was a is or was at the time, a 37 year old Harvard trained brain scientist, and she experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. Um, this happened in on December 10th, my birthday, 1996, and she observed over a four hour period, her mind deteriorate to the point that she couldn't walk, talk, read, write.

She couldn't recall anything about her life, and during that period of time, she alternated between the euphoria of intuitive kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete wellbeing and peace and the logical sequential left brain in which she recognized she was having a stroke. And returned to the left side of her brain in moments of clarity, enabled her to seek help and before she was completely lost. 

And so the book, My Stroke of Insight is an incredibly detailed account of her experiences while both going through the stroke and then, and the subsequent shutdown of her left hemisphere, as well as her harrowing eight year full recovery. She also has an amazing TED Talk about this experience, but I highly recommend the book My Stroke of Insight.

It's a fascinating and inspiring read.

Sarah: From everything I've read and heard and and studied about how the right brain works. It's working in images, it's not logical, it's working in emotion. It's It's like what is happening energetically, emotionally, with color, with sound, with feeling, it's image, it's art, it's the art side. 

And then there's the linear side, which is the left side of the brain that is like making words have meaning, right?

When we're trying to use the left side of the brain to solve something that's unresolvable, like an unresolvable dilemma. We, the right side of the brain has busily, like my right side of the brain has been paying attention to all the things that my narrow focus of my logical side of the brain wasn't paying attention to as it was trying to figure out the problem in this impossible way. 

And once I did something with my hands. So I opened up a journal, I opened up a book, I opened up a drawer. I like played around. I was messing around with my hands and it was like they led me to the page of my journal that I was looking for something else.

I was looking for something else to solve the problem. And it opened up to the phases of the moon that I had journaled out, like six or seven months ago, and it fell open to that page and answered my dilemma in a completely all at once bolt of lightning way was like a big aha of like, I've already been sitting on it all this time. There's no need to try to solve it this other way.

Kathy: But there's no magic.

Sarah: Right. Well, it's not, but is it? 

But it, it felt like magic. That's the thing. It feels that whatever that is, feels like magic in my body. So I call it magic. 

But neurologically, there's probably something happening in my brain waves that made that happen that I signaled by opening, I don't know what it was. Or maybe my subconscious was, cuz it's so smart, maybe it led me to that particular page and that journal because it knew, but I didn't, so I was on an autopilot cause I was so, I don't know.

What is that? What is that? That happens, in that creative process?

Kathy: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think we could talk about that for hours.

You know, I mean, it's funny because one of my, oh shoot, that's one of my rapid fire questions. I'm gonna pull it out now.

What's your take on the nature of reality, I dialed it down to what what word best encapsulates the nature of reality for you.

And, and so that thing you just described, that whole process in my mind, it really is the nature of reality. It's like, reality is so chaotic and not chaotic. There's such structure within chaos. It's such a dance.

And we keep trying to quantify it and qualify it and put it in boxes and capture it and tame it... 

through science, which I'm not an anti-science person, but I do think that we, sometimes we don't leave room for more information to come. You know what I'm saying? And I think that this lifetime will never answer all of those questions that, like, we label them magic or we label some things magical thinking or whatever.

But I think it's the nature of reality. There's so much room for shit to happen that you just don't expect. And there's so much room for play. 

And that's why the message for me for the last 10 years of trying to solve my grappling with depression and anxiety and despondency and not being able to figure out why is life worth living, it's like, cuz think less, play more. You know? That's the nature of all of it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kathy: But we do have so much of it outside of Now and... 

Sarah: Right. 

Kathy: you know what I'm saying?

Sarah: I do. And then I also, my word would be paradox or mystery, and I feel that the scientists who are uncovering answers to mysteries always find more mysteries. I think a lot of play is at the heart of our best science. 

It's play. It's like, what if?

It's a hypothesis? It's like, what if, what if and if we're gonna do this, what if, and there's also this unknowable source that's like complete unknowable. 

It's a complete pipe dream to figure anything out. So what a romantic thing to be a scientist and try to solve these problems that are fundamentally with mystery at the core. And they all know it. And the questions are so big, so like, what if, and also the knowledge and the mystery are always entwined. 

And I think that when you were saying we're always up here in our mind. Um, it's not even about always being up in our mind because we're always in our minds. Our minds and our bodies and everything are always playing. But in that thought there's a way of thinking when you're in flow that you're puzzling something out, that's such pleasure.

For those of us who enjoy jigsaw puzzles, not everybody does, but there's a part of it that's your body that's finding a piece and like clicking it into place that's so pleasurable.

And there's the part of you that's your mind that's trying to like frame it out first and put groups of colors, like with like, and finding the lines in the shapes and they're entwined, they're happening at the same time. 

I think the nature of reality is like holding that paradox for us all the time and showing us this is how it's done, it's total chaos. Total random weather patterns and the crystalline structure of ice and water in the clouds and how hurricanes form, like look, this is a fractal. You can also do it with glitter in this way. 

You can do it in your bathtub this way. It's always showing us that it's, it's reliable and completely unreliable at the same time.

Kathy: Yeah. Which can be very uncomfortable for people, especially if you come, which all of us have trauma in some form or another. It's hard to quantify that, but I do believe that especially childhood trauma can create an extreme lack of ability to be uncomfortable.

So mystery and paradox feels super uncomfortable. And yet, and I'm that way. I'm learning to reframe discomfort.

Sarah: Yeah.

Kathy: You know, it's like, wow, is that really that uncomfortable? It's just a feeling, it's just an energy, a vibe in my body. 

It's kind of like what you talk about and I think it has to do with the somatic practices, it's coming into your body and becoming curious about that feeling. 

 Rather than assigning it a meaning. Just experiencing it and maybe playing with it a little bit saying, wow, what color is that? Or what shape is that? Or, or talk to it. Say, Hey, hello, I see you. 

And so you increase your capacity to have those feelings. And I think that helps you dance with life a little bit better. If you can say I can be okay with mystery. I can be okay with not knowing. I'm actually safe not knowing. 

So there again, all of it informs all of it. Everything is so interconnected. It just--

Kathy: you know, it makes my brain explode. 

Sarah: I know, I know. I think that stories help us, writing them and reading them. Because it's another place where that can happen in a mi like just talking about micro and macro, like if we read a book that makes us laugh and cry at the same time there, it's doing it. It's doing it. That's it. That's the stuff. 

And for the person who's writing it, that person needs to expand their tolerance and capacity for the energy of happiness and sadness within the body of that character and the embodiment of that character.

Whether that's a memoir and it's the character of yourself in the past or fiction and it's embodying it from the place of a character you are imagining or a composite, you're experiencing it. 

So you're stretching your capacity to feel it while you're in the trance of writing it. And then you're giving the gift to the reader.

And as when we read something, we're stretching, we're practicing feeling different feelings through the lives of those characters too. It's how we stretch that capacity. 

And again, there is like a trance of being a reader and a trance of being a writer. And then, so much of my journey as a human being is that off ramp from the trance to quote unquote real life, just like expanding my highway, so I don't have to leave the highway to go do that all the time. 

But actually, you know, have a full spectrum of experience in my real life and my writing, and not have the pain of switching gears, and leaving it and coming back to it, you know? 

Kathy: that. Yeah. It's an integration. Again,

Sarah: Yeah. 

Kathy: Everybody comes along for the ride. All parts of me.

Sarah: All parts. Mm-hmm. Yeah 

Kathy: I love that. 

In all of the things that we've explored right now, I keep coming back to, I mean, this podcast is meant to be an encouragement to creatives.

Sarah: Great. 

Kathy: I'm not trying to be too specific, but I know for me as a creative who struggles to fit into the structures of the world, I've struggled my whole life to find like, where do I fit? I'm a round peg in a hole that like, it's octagonal or I don't know, I don't know. I don't fit. 

And so there is a lot of battling with getting stuck, just frozen and stuck. So in light of the things that we have explored, does anything come to mind for you that might help artists or creatives find themselves more often in a more spacious place and out of that deep rut. 

Sarah: Sure. I know that rut. Yeah. And I know that feeling. It's such a drag to be looking for a place that you belong if you are an outlier. 

 It's not the point to fit. The point is that it does take a lot of energy to try to find it and to try to find the right sounding boards and find the right community that you fit in. It just like can... 

I have spent a lot of time doing that and I've had great experiences and a lot of great material has come from it. 

But I think that, orienting towards the sparkles that give you a feeling of peace, wonder, delight, calm, and self... starting from there and starting small from there, and then orienting towards it and collecting more and more of those in a day.

Because in that state of mind that you're in, for me, one of the small things in the dark days of winter when my mental health is at its lowest, which is related to weather, it's these particular kind of stickers that I've found, they're transfers that you scratch on with a little stick, and then they peel onto the page. So there's like a physical sensation that reminds me probably of something I've done as a kid. 

Or it's like decals that I put in my book. So it's not for anything, but I have created a ritual around it that makes it purposeful, cause I put it in my planner. So it's very professional. 

Although, my mother did catch sight of it a few weeks ago and said, what is that? It looks like a child's book. And I was like, yeah, it looks like a child's book. 

But that's what it is. It's playful. It's playful. So whatever that is. And sometimes for me it's just cooking and slicing vegetables, slicing vegetables is a big one for me. Cooking is a big one for me. 

There's scent. Again, it's the sensory, it's like bringing the animal of your body to play with something that it's paws can touch. Um, that brings you to a place where it doesn't matter where you belong because in that moment, you belong to yourself. 

It helps to be able to stretch it from there and know what you're doing. Maybe with the help of a somatic coach or a teacher or a good friend who can hang out with you there longer, so you can also put words onto it and ground it and expand it so it's, so it becomes a practice and part of your decision making in your life, you orient towards those times when you feel like you belong to yourself more often. 

Because if you hang out there and say, okay, this is it. This is actually my enough zone. This is actually the zone that is my birthright. 

This is actually the zone that life is made out of. And you know, whatever it is that you need to reinforce it for yourself so that it's not just a glimmer that happens sometimes. But actually you can organize your life more and more around those experiences and expressions. It does take some diligence because our habits and our defaults for most of us are not set to go towards what feels good.

So we have, so there is some diligence. It is a practice, but it's worthwhile. And then tracking it. That's the other thing, I think, paying attention to those moments and tracking it. I have a little corner. 

This is very practical stuff, but i, like, I have a, a space in my planner where every week when those glimmers, when those moments happen, no matter what they are, they might be professional, they might be relational, they might be totally random, like putting stickers in my planner.

If I have those moments, I collect them and I list them. It's not so much looking back at it, although sometimes that's nice nostalgically flipping back and seeing all the moments of delight that I've had, but it's more in the moment of writing it down.

I'm hanging out there longer, so I'm giving myself my own serotonin, re-uptake inhibitor. Like, it's strengthening the neural pathway, I think just hanging out there a little bit longer to write it down in the time that it takes to imagine it, find the words to articulate it, articulate it, write it down and make it concrete.

It's a mini celebration, but it's also just a way to rewire my brain towards the things that give me delight instead of, and it replaces any thought of doubt. It's like very mechanical. 

Kathy: Love that. I Love that you say it's practical, but that's what we need. We need practical things like that. And just one little thought is that, in our culture, we've gotten to be intolerant of these processes. We're such an instant gratification culture that we don't even know how to do that kind of work.

It's like, oh, just take a pill. And I know this is controversial because medicating for depression and stuff is a thing, and believe me, I was on medication for eight years, but I chose that I didn't wanna go that route because it narrowed my whole view of the world to this little slice. And that wasn't tolerable for who I am as a person. 

And then there's all the other side effects and all of that. So for me, the journey has been how can I, how can I give myself medicine...

Sarah: Yeah.

Kathy: through practice. But it is hard in our culture because it is work. It is something that you have to determine that you're going to do. And it's hard when you're in that moment, when you're deep down in the... 

Sarah: You don't wanna do it. 

Kathy: no, or you don't even remember that you have that, 

Sarah: Or you don't remember that you 

Kathy & Sarah: have the capacity. 

Sarah: I know. Yeah. 

Kathy: Or that you have a tool at your fingertips... 

Sarah: Which is why it's useful to have someone who's tracking you to remind you, and you can set those. Can you remind me next time this happens? 

And the medication, there are different medications, they react with different bodies in different ways and different chemistries. And I've experienced some, way back. I think they've changed a lot in recent years, I hope. But there is also a benefit, like they can help if you want to do this work on your own. There is also a room for both.

Like the medication can definitely help you rewire your own brain. So yeah, there's room again, paradox, right? It's like it's both /and. Yeah. 

Kathy: Thank you for framing that. That's beautiful. 

Sarah: Have you, have you read The Big Leap? 

Kathy: No, but you talked about it briefly, so 

Sarah: Yeah, and that's Gay Hendrix. That's his book. 

Kathy: Okay. All right. Well, no.

Sarah: Yeah, the theory is just thinking about it in terms of capacity in our nervous system. I've read it so many times and it's written for corporate men; you have to have a lot of salt water as you filter through it. 

But the way I'm understanding it and putting it in my own words now is we have to expand to tolerate different states of being, and states of wellness for some of us, for all of us in different ways, as we grow and evolve, we're trying to achieve a state of wellness. And that too is hard to tolerate. 

It's sometimes hard to tolerate things going well, our nervous system can't tolerate the feeling of, whatever, like being in love with someone who respects you, or making enough money so you're not in financial strain or you know, not being in pain or, feeling vibrant and healthy in your body and your bloodstream.

 Those are all states that aren't our default. So it takes something of us to tolerate being better. And it's so weird. It's like we have this inner thermostat and when we get to a certain point, we have to bring the temperature down, so we like pick a fight with our partner or eat like a whole gross chocolate bunny, or do something that's then gonna make us go back to a thermostat that we're more comfortable with.

He calls it an upper limit problem, which... it's like thinking about things as problems is not always helpful to me because then... How do I solve the problem? 

But if I think of it more in terms of , okay, I have to stretch my capacity like a balloon that you're blowing air into, like, life is so good. I'm safe. I feel really creatively aligned, I have good friends, my house is safe and beautiful and warm. 

Like just slowly stretch. And then before I reach the point where I pick a fight with Ryan, then just hang out there and be like, oh, just have knowledge that this is a little bit more than I'm used to and maybe just calm myself down a little bit. 

Cuz it can be, too much. So just sit with it, sit quietly, make myself a cup of tea and feel good for five minutes. 

Kathy: Yeah, that's good. And, and get out of the thoughts that are going around all the feelings. It's like, get out of tho those stories.

Sarah: Yeah. The stories aren't helpful cuz they're all based on other anchors to past stories. And this is a new state that, that I haven't had before. 

Kathy: Yeah. 

Sarah: old stories don't help me. 

Kathy: Yeah. That was gorgeous. Thank you so much for that. 

 So What about your life makes you well up with gratitude?

Sarah: Oh my gosh, so much.

Uh, one, this is just a really specific personal thing, but, uh, privileges have put me in a place where I live close to nature.

Kathy: Yeah. 

Sarah: And not in a city. And it works for me, so beautifully. And I'm so grateful every day if I feel dysregulated or blocked or frustrated or out of touch with the source, with that conduit whether I'm writing or other places of our life, I can literally look out the window and see like a field and expanse of trees waving at me. 

Just like they did when I was a little girl before I knew that trees were separate from me, you know? And that's still there. And I'm grateful for the nature that I have access to. 

Kathy: Yeah. 

That's beautiful. I'm imagining a world where we just recognize that city or rural doesn't matter. We're gonna design our cities so that they feel rural, so that there's just more connection with nature in everything that we build as a species. 

I'm imagining that reality. 

Sarah: I love You know, again, paradox. When I lived in toronto, I had such a love affair with that city. It was so good. There was, we had some good times. It was a good relationship. We had a really good relationship. 

And now I've found my long-term love. And Toronto was a very green city where I lived. I did have access to parks and trees and plants. 

Kathy: Yeah, yeah. 

Sarah: So not all cities are like that.

Kathy: No, no. And that's the sad piece of it, but we'll, we'll get there. I trust we will get there somehow. 

So how do you feel about a little lightning round? Does that sound fun?

Sarah: Okay, I'll try.

Kathy: And if any one of these is uncomfortable, you just pass, meeh.

Ready?

Sarah: Ready!

Kathy: Alright. What's your go-to comfort food?

Sarah: Oh, uh, avocados.

Kathy: Coffee, tea, crack. 

Sarah: Um, coffee and tea.

Kathy: Oh, okay. Caffeine. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Kathy: Okay. 

Sarah: And no. 

Kathy & Sarah: Both. All it. Yeah. All of it.

Kathy: What is your imaginable animal?

Sarah: A tiger.

Kathy: Hmm. Love that. Ooh, I'm gonna tell Tiger Story in a second. Mountains ocean desert, celestial body, city?

Sarah: Yes. All of it.

Kathy: Love that Yeah. 

Sarah: And lakes. 

Kathy: Oh, lakes. Yeah. 

What makes you laugh?

Sarah: Um, talking animals, videos of dogs, where they've put human voices and make their mouths move. Ma, I can't handle it.

Kathy: love that. Oh, oh. Someday I'm gonna do that to you on a call.

Uh, what is the key ingredient in your secret sauce of joy?

Sarah: Sparkle, glitter iridescence. 

Kathy: Hmm. If Chatty Kathy was to pull your string, would you say?

Sarah: If Chatty Kathy was to pull my string?

Kathy: Yeah. 

Sarah: Magic happens.

Kathy: Ah, good. I love that. 

Uh, and we already talked about the word that best encapsulates the nature of reality. And you said:

Kathy & Sarah: Paradox.

Sarah: Paradox 

Kathy & Sarah: Mm-hmm. What will be your parting sentence to this life?

Sarah: Hmm.

Kathy: It's not lightning. Just don't think about it too 

Sarah: Oh my God. 

Uh... thanks. Bye.

Kathy: I love it. 

And what's your epitaph?

Sarah: Uh, my epitaph. I really love light. It would probably be something about light. I like the stuff. I like how it makes rainbows and prisms. I like how it forms around things. 

Um, is an epitaph, like 

Kathy: We would write that.

Sarah: You would write it for me?

Kathy: Shall I write it for you?

Sarah: Um, yeah, you can write it. I don't really have a-- you, but like when I'm gone, whatever's left of me is for you guys. It's for everybody else. It's for like the people around who I'm not, I'm not there anymore. So you decide. 

Kathy: She always gave off radiant shimmering light. 

Sarah: She glowed like a glow worm. Her phosphorescence was weird. 

Kathy: Her butt was shiny.

Sarah: Whatever the epitaph is 

Kathy: my 

God 

Sarah: just make sure a dog says it in human, in English 

Kathy: Yes. Okay. Yeah. And by then, all of our headstones will have little... 

Sarah: Right!

Kathy: screens 

Sarah: Holograms. Yeah. Yeah, 

Kathy: What breed shall it be then?

Sarah: Oh, probably a Collie. Maybe a shelty would be really cute. 

Kathy: Okay. Yeah, we'll come up with that. We can do do that I don't know why I had this weird fixation with death at the end there, but I just feel like it's all an adventure, so...

Sarah: Well, we're on our way.

Kathy: All right. It's all, it's gonna happen to us all at some point. 

Sarah: It's one thing we have to do.

Kathy: Mm-hmm.

Let me tell you a really quick story, and I'm kind of trying to quote it from another person. So during one of our calls for the course, Cathy Heller interviewed this gal Andrea McClean. She has a podcast called This Girl Is On Fire. She's a British, she was a morning host kind of person, really famous, but she left corporate media, started her podcast.

She was an amazing guest and she talked about how we, especially women, live in this cell, you know, with bars surrounding us. Door is open, but on the other side of the bars is this massive tiger pacing back and forth and back and forth.

And anytime you make a move for that door, the tiger leaps at the bars and sends you back, away. And one day you somehow summon the courage and you step through Through the door and that tiger leaps on you and pins you to the ground and breathes into your face. And you're looking up and you suddenly realize that all that hot breath, those giant fangs is waves of love...

Sarah: Oh....

Kathy: ...and protection....

Sarah: Oh my God... 

Kathy: coming at you. 

And in that moment this, moment of choice where you can take hold of that big, furry, scary face and beam all of your love and appreciation and gratitude back at that tiger. And then she will hop off, come to your side, you put your hand on her head and you walk forward together. And I, that story, I just burst out crying because it was like,

Sarah: Me too. 

Kathy: What a way to reimagine our fear and our ego even. That protection mechanism that is there because of love. Self-love, like, I'm gonna protect you. 

But there is a, an order to things. There is a sort of hierarchy where we can move that energy to be in the sidecar instead of the driver's seat. 

I just, for me it's such a visual to sink my hands. Yeah. Sink my hands into that soft, big fur of that head and feel the power underneath my hand and know that I'm still the one kind of walking ahead, you know, so I just, tiger, tiger. Yeah, it's awesome. 

Sarah: It's the year of the tiger.

Kathy: It is. Ooh sarah, that's exciting. 

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I know. 

Kathy: So tell me about what project you're working on right now or this is gonna come out sometime in January, so... 

Sarah: What am I working on right now? 

I'm, I am working on, um, this year, Radiant Shimming Light was released in Polish. It was a new translation, first time in the Polish translation, and it was released in January or February this year. 

So when all of the Ukraine was going into war and all these people were coming into Poland and the editor of the book sent me a personal note saying he hopes this brings some joy and some light to the people who really needed this time and I thought, I did not write this book thinking that any of this would happen, obviously. 

So for it to land in that language at this time felt really special, and I'm grateful for that. 

And what I'm working on next is... it's a book on writing for writers at different phases of their writing journey in that spiral. To motivate, instruct, refresh, and inspire.

Kathy: Beautiful. A natural thing to come from you.

Sarah: It's been so long. Why didn't I do this before now? I don't know. 

Kathy: Because it wasn't time.

Sarah: It wasn't time. 

Kathy & Sarah: Yeah.

Sarah: We'll see. 

Kathy: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you

Sarah: Thank you so much my friend.

Kathy: Thank you, give my love to Ryan.

Sarah: I will.

Kathy: All right, we'll talk again soon, I hope.

Kathy & Sarah: Bye. 

Kathy: Thanks so much for joining us today.

Find out much more about all of the goodness Sarah Selecky has going on by visiting her website: sarahselecky.com. Links are in the show notes to help you find the Sarah Selecky Writing School, The Story Course, along with many other super helpful writers resources, as well as Sarah's wonderful books.

 If you enjoyed this conversation, please come back for more. I've got some really interesting and inspiring guests on tap for upcoming episodes. I've got award-winning authors, actors, more plant medicine people, nervous system experts, just a smorgasbord of goodness and curiosity. And also, if you could please help me grow my audience by sharing with your friends, and especially subscribing to rating and reviewing the show.

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